“Thank you,” he prays, his voice trembling. Praying is still a little new to him. For most of seven decades, praying has been something others did for him.
He lived most of those years across the street from our church … a little curious, a little dubious, never quite working up the nerve to walk over and see what went on, beyond the parked cars and the soft glowing lights.
Last year, he finally made the trek. Sitting in the big, unfamiliar room, amid a sea of unfamiliar faces, he heard something that somehow had never really registered before – that he could know God. That Jesus could actually come into his life and change things.
He prayed for that, and things changed.
Now he sits in a much smaller room, in a small pond of unfamiliar faces – a neophyte among acolytes – pushing tentatively out into new waters of faith. He listens to their teasing and their stories, their names and connections. He bows his head when they do.
He nods with their prayers, as the murmuring tide of words works its way slowly around to him.
Their prayers are smooth and straightforward, the phrases rolling easily – maybe too easily – from their tongues. But he is on strange, holy ground, and the words stutter awkwardly out.
“Thank you,” he says again, in the voice of one still dumbfounded that he was found. That out of all those years, all those decades of stubborn refusal to cross the street, Someone unimaginably greater than himself gently, quietly drew him into new life … a new eternity. He is awash in wonder.
"Thank you for … this. For – thank you. For bringing me here. I … I … uh, just … thank you.”
The last is a hushed gasp of gratitude. Then silence.
The quiet hangs thick and heavy for long moments. In this angry, arrogant, feverish, fomenting world, men are dazed to hear real humility. Like a poem in a foreign language.
* * * * *
She is five years old, shy and happy, with a little-girl smile that breaks as slow and soft and bright as new morning across her chubby cheeks.
She is where she most likes to be – in the arms of her daddy – as he carries her to bed and begins the cherished routines of tucking her in. She was in his arms earlier today, too, trying not to peek as he stood on a sidewalk, praying for the people across the street.
She is too young in years and soul to know what the words of the people across the street meant. But she knows that tone, when people scream their furies and accusations. She held close to her dad, listening, peeking while he prayed, watching the angry faces and the fists slashing the air.
Her dad prayed by name for one of those faces … the man in the suit. She could not imagine what that man does for his living – what he does to little boys and girls not so much younger than herself, to be sure that they are never in their father’s arms … that they never smile the shy, soft smile she saves for kinder strangers.
But she remembers her daddy, saying the name. And now, a little sleepy, her face leaning on her hands against the side of her bed, she wiggles on her knees, and prays for the same man he did. Whispering his name to her God.
Her daddy, listening, feels his throat tighten. Even those who know how to love are amazed – always, always amazed – to see again, hear again, the pure, real thing.
* * * * *
Their numbers grow, day by day – those who mean to silence the church, erode its faith, abolish its God. They are ferocious. Determined. Lost. We have much to share with them. But nothing to fear from them.
For we stand on the side of our Savior, and His angels.
Of an old man, half-speechless before His Father’s grace.
And a little girl who knows nothing of theology. But everything a soul can grasp about God.
Hi Chris, great blog!